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So I think it means something bad and unhealthy about everyone involved, but not exactly the same bad and unhealthy thing.
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I agree with you. We live in a culture with different mores for men and women. The woman in this consensual scenario went much further outside the rules of culturally sanctioned behavior than did the men. That doesn't mean she's right or wrong, crazy or sane...it just means we have to look at her behavior in that context when we try to understand what happened.
Consider a non-sexual example. My sister, a social worker, was trying to help a family in the projects. One very troubled child in the family was eating the cockroaches in the apartment. Now it turns out that cockroaches are edible, they are considered food in some cultures, and the child wasn't in immediate physical danger from eating them. But that's not really the issue. Our culture says that cockroaches are disgusting vermin, not food. This child's violation of the cultural taboo was a strong signal that something was terribly wrong -- that the child viewed herself as lowly like vermin, or that she was going to extremes to disgust and offend her family. You couldn't understand what was going on in that family in the absence of the cultural taboo.
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red headed Cam
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